Banana Oatmeal Bread

The Daring Bakers’ February 2012 host was – Lis! Lisa stepped in last minute and challenged us to create a quick bread we could call our own. She supplied us with a base recipe and shared some recipes she loves from various websites and encouraged us to build upon them and create new flavor profiles. 

Banana bread is one of my favorite things to eat. Now, I don't bake it all that often given that I also love bananas and will eat them up well before they'd be ready for banana bread. But for Daring Bakers, I resisted temptation. Ok, ok. Actually I just bought seven bananas at once, definitely more bananas than even I can eat in a week.

This recipe from Joy the Baker came together quickly, not taking much longer than a few minutes before it was in the oven. But, it used three bowls. One for the dry, one for the wet, and one for the egg whites. Growing up, my family was often in the just-throw-it-all-in-one-bowl-and-mix-it-up class of baker. And I have to say, everything seemed to turn out just fine. So I'm wondering if you really need that separate wet ingredient bowl, and next time I try this recipe I may skip it and see.

I would recommend going out of your way to have large bananas or to have an extra banana or two. There was a shortage of bananas at my grocery store when I went and I ended up with a rather petite bunch of organic bananas (so not worth the extra cost, by the way). I had issues with the outside crust getting slightly tough while there was still a slightly gooey center and I wonder if my small bananas had something to do with that. Not enough moisture throughout or something. Though that gooey center? Oh. My. Deliciousness.